Students looking to purchase papers or surreptitiously copy a few lines of a scholarly article into their own would be advised to refrain from doing so - at least for a while longer.
District court judge Claude Hilton ruled this month that the services offered by anti-cheating Web site Turnitin.com do not violate any intellectual property laws, and the site can continue checking the originality of student work - a ruling that came as no surprise to both Turnitin and students alike.
"On the face of it, the lawsuit didn't make a lot of sense," Turnitin founder and CEO John Barrie said. "I think a lot of people were expecting this to turn out the way it did."
A lawsuit filed in March of 2007 by two Virginia high school students contended that Turnitin.com violated the intellectual property rights of the students who submitted papers to the site.
Turnitin automatically archives the papers it receives and adds them to the database against which it checks later works. The students argued that because Turnitin charges a fee for schools to subscribe to the service, it profits from the use of student papers without asking or compensating the student.
One of the plaintiffs claimed that Turnitin had archived a paper he had submitted, even though he had submitted it with instructions that it was not to be added to the database. The plaintiffs had sought $900,000 in damages from Turnitin.
Many in the education industry watched the case closely, as more than 8,400 schools and universities in 103 countries, including Harvard University and Georgetown University, currently use Turnitin's services. Its database currently totals over 50 million works, including scholarly articles, and the site receives around 125,000 submissions daily.
The case was also watched closely as a legal precedent regarding intellectual property rights in general - it was particularly relevant to a case involving the Google.com search engine's practice of scanning books and adding them to its index for search purposes. Several groups representing authors and publishers are suing the search engine, claiming that it failed to obtain permission from the works' originators before scanning them. The Turnitin case will likely bolster Google's position.
Hilton ruled that Turnitin had done nothing illegal, in part because its use of the submitted works was "highly transformative." That is, Turnitin used the students' papers in a way that was significantly different from how the students themselves would have used them.
Hilton also found that the students had entered into a "valid contractual agreement when the Plaintiffs clicked 'I Agree' to acknowledge the terms of the Clickwrap Agreement," according to the ruling. By submitting to Turnitin's user agreement policy, the plaintiffs had voided any grounds for a grievance against Turnitin.
Attorney Robert A. Vanderhye, who represented the plaintiffs pro bono, said the ruling would be appealed, according to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. He expressed confidence that an appellate court would reverse the ruling.
Barrie said he is equally confident that the ruling will be upheld.
"In my opinion, Hell will freeze over before [the plaintiffs] will appeal," he said. "A judge doesn't rule for summary judgment unless he's
damn sure."
Barrie described the ruling as a "huge victory" for Turnitin. He admitted that the lawsuit may have made some potential customers think twice, but suggested that most would not take the suit seriously.
Barrie also denied that Turnitin would alter its practices as a result of the lawsuit. Instead, the site has plans to expand into 18 languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian. It is also planning a partnership with Moodle, an open-source learning management system similar to Blackboard.
Barrie emphasized that it was not his original intention to become a policeman for student plagiarism.
"None of us set out to catch cheaters," he said. "I came up with the idea when I was a graduate TA at [University of California] Berkeley. I wanted to improve the undergraduate experience by giving students a place to peer review their papers. [Turnitin] was designed to help students
cite better."
"I'm actually against students being punished for plagiarism," Barrie said. "That doesn't help anyone."
At Tufts, where Turnitin is used on a class-by-class basis, students have mixed feelings about the service.
"I can understand why professors would want to use something like Turnitin," freshman Romy Oltuski said. "It allows them to do something quickly that's basically impossible otherwise."
Oltuski, who has never been required to use Turnitin while at Tufts, denied feeling as though the site violated
her rights.
Several others were more doubtful of Turnitin's legal footing, as well as the lawsuit's outcome. Sophomore Marc Soskin expressed frustration with the ruling.
"It seems like they didn't take the students very seriously," he said. "It was like, 'Oh, you students and your silly lawsuits.'"
Barrie acknowledged that there has been a fair amount of backlash against Turnitin.
"A lot of people have criticized it, saying it destroys the student-teacher relationship," he said. "But no one has come up with anything better. Relying just on honor codes is like saying 'Good luck' to honest students. They're the only ones being hurt."
